Well, he was the master and ruler of the world.

Until today, I hadn’t heard of this:

I recently watched King of the Ring 1995

Vince McMahon and Dok Hendrix (Michael Hayes) on commentary. From Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Spoiler alert – the booking (and the wrestling) on this PPV is awful. However, the bad booking started even before the tournament, with the KOTR qualifying matches. The result is the weakest field imaginable for this tournament. They had Owen Hart and the British Bulldog fight to a time limit draw, eliminating both men (rather than just have them wrestle again, as they’ve done in years past when this has happened) and both of those guys are much better than most of the clowns (no, luckily Doink didn’t qualify) who are actually in the tournament. Heck, I'd rather see Henry O. Godwin (the evil pig farmer, Jean-Pierre Lafitte (the evil pirate. AKA Jacques Rougeau), or even Adam Bomb, than the majority of the wrestlers in this tournament!  So, here are some of the guys who will NOT wrestle at this PPV: Owen Hart, the British Bulldog, Lex Luger, Jeff Jarrett, Razor Ramon, the 1-2-3 Kid, and Hakushi. Plus, Diesel will not defend his WWF title but will wrestle in a tag team match. Meanwhile, we get such wrestling immortals as the Roadie (with ONE single match under his belt), Savio Vega (AKA Kang, who is a recent addition to the roster so most people don’t even know who he is), and Kama. Okay, Razor had a legit injury, and I THINK the 1-2-3 Kid might have as well, plus Diesel is recovering from a legit injury so they put him in a tag match to protect him, but how can you not have Owen Hart, the defending champ, and best worker (aside from Shawn Michaels) in the potential KOTR field, in this tournament? Mind blowing stupidity by the WWF here. It’s a wonder that anyone bought this PPV.  I'll be glad when 1995 is over in my WWF/WCW viewing.  


First we have a King of the Ring Qualifying Match: IRS w/ Ted Dibiase vs. Savio Vega w/ Razor Ramon

Oh boy, a bonus match, what a treat. With Razor not medically cleared for the tournament, this is a qualifying match added at the last minutes. Vega wins with a spinning heel kick, which was sort of his finisher. This was an okay match. Nothing special, but certainly not bad at all. Rather basic. One thing really annoyed me, though. When IRS was sent out of the ring, and Hendrix says he needs to bring him back in because “you can’t beat him outside the ring”. Yes, you can!!! This is a KOTR qualifying match. A countout is as good as a pin, you moron! It’s one of my pet peeves about wrestling announcers, when they say that, because it’s NOT TRUE except for in matches where a championship belt is at stake.


Anyway, next up is the first King of the Ring Quarterfinal Match: Savio Vega w/ Razor Ramon vs. Yokozuna w/ Jim Cornette and Mr. Fuji

Savio has to go again already. Savio wins when Yoko is run into a ringpost outside the ring and is counted out. See, you can beat him outside the ring! Anyway, this was not a good match at all. Yoko wasn’t good for much at this point in his career and Savio Vega is certainly not the guy to carry him to something decent.


Next is another King of the Ring Quarterfinals match: The Roadie (w/Jeff Jarrett) vs. Bob “Spark Plugg” Holly

Roadie wins (!) when Holly comes off the top rope but runs into Roadie’s boot and Roadie covers for the pin, even though Holly’s shoulder was clearly up. Other than the slightly botched finish (I’m not sure what happened there) this was a decent match. Mostly because of Holly, who I think is pretty good (too bad he’s not a member of the Kliq) though Roadie did a good job of bumping.


Next quarterfinal match is Kama (w/ Ted DiBiase) vs. Shawn Michaels

We get a time limit draw here. Sigh. This was a pretty good match, mostly due to Michaels, but it seemed to be wrestled at a pace without much urgency (considering the time limit) until the last couple of minutes. So, we best and also most popular wrestler in the entire tournament is gone after just the first round. Of course, they did this so that Mabel could get more rest before the final. This is the problem with booking big fat guys to reach the final – you have to do these BS time limit draws to rest them. Same thing happened in 1993 with Bam Bam Bigelow. They could have done the brackets differently, and maybe had the Roadie-Holly match be the one ending in a time limit draw, then have Shawn (or Undertaker)in the other half of the draw so that he could face Mabel in the finals. I guess that would have made too much sense, though. Plus the paying fans get screwed out of one match.


Last quarterfinal match is Mabel (w/ Mo) vs. The Undertaker (w/ Paul Bearer)

Taker performs the jumping clothesline and a chokeslam, then covers for the pin. Unfortunately, Kama arrives and kicks Taker in the head whilst the ref is distracted. Mabel follows that with a leg drop and gets the win. This was a terrible match. ‘nuff said. So now, the other wrestler in this tournament that people actually care about, the Undertaker, is ALSO gone in the first round! This is WCW level stupidity.


Next is our first, and only, semifinal match: Savio Vega (w/ Razor Ramon) vs. The Roadie (w/ Jeff Jarrett)

Are you kidding me? Roadie vs. Savio Vega in a King of the Ring SEMIFINAL?! Wow. Anyway, Roadie runs into Jarrett on the apron and Vega rolls him up for the win. A boring match. Not terrible, but not good either.


By the way, the Philly crowd started out hot for this show, but at this point the WWF has lost the crowd, as they have gotten quieter as this PPV has progressed, and were fairly dead for this one. I can’t blame them at all, after this garbage. Also, some people started an “ECW” chant.


Next we have the Kiss My Foot Match: Bret Hart vs. Jerry Lawler

It’s always good to see Bret Hart and all that, but this feud has gotten out of hand. I don’t think I need to explain the idea behind this match. We’ve also had to endure a lot of bad foot jokes and some “training” videos showing how Lawler is making his feet disgusting on the weekly shows leading up to this. Anyway, Bret wins after knocking around Lawler throughout most of the match, when Hakushi’s interference backfires, then Bret has Lawler kiss his foot, per the rules of the match, really shoving his toes into Lawler’s mouth. Disgusting. Then, as promised, he made Lawler kiss HIS OWN foot, shoving Lawler’s foot into his own mouth. I have to say, I am very impressed that Lawler was flexible enough to swallow his own foot! This was a pretty good match. BY no means a great match, and certainly not one of Bret Hart’s better matches, but by the low standards of this PPV, it was pretty good, and it did wake up the crowd a little bit.

You might think (and hope) that this was the blowoff for this feud, but I believe it does continue Oh well.


KOTR Finals: Mabel (w/ Mo) vs. Savio Vega (w/ Razor Ramon)

Mabel wins with a front falling slam. This was terrible. One of the worst PPV matches ever. Slow, boring, and just not good at all. What a disaster. We get another “ECW” chant. Way to get the crowd to turn on you, WWF! That was about the only noise the crowd made for this match, though, as they couldn’t have cared less. Who can blame them?


For our feature match, we get WWF Champion Diesel and Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Tatanka and Sycho Sid w/ Ted Dibiase

The good guys win when Sid walks out on his teammate (with fans throwing trash at him) after Diesel had pulled Tatanka up after a two count and motioned for Sid to come in, so then Diesel hitting an elbow drop on Tatanka for the pin. Terrible match with a garbage finish. And I fail to see the logic in making Sid look like a complete coward when you are grooming him for a title shot at the next PPV in a month. This makes no sense and again, I will say that it’s WCW level stupidity.


Mabel and Mo get garbage thrown on them during the crowning ceremony, and Mo took waaay too long to read the proclamation.


This is the worst WWF PPV I’ve seen up to this point in time. The quality of the wrestling was bad and nothing about the booking (other than Hart-Lawler) made any sense. The Michaels match, the Hart match, and maybe the Holly match were all decent to pretty good, but everything else was awful and not even close to PPV quality. The semifinal and final were truly awful.


Some other general notes. I saw Vlad the superfan (as usual) and he was actually wearing a tee shirt instead of a tank top. First time I’ve seen that, I think.

We get another freaking ref bump! I’m so sick of this happening at every single PPV. Also, nobody ever hooks the leg. Someone like Gorilla Monsoon might point this out on commentary, and it is rather stupid, but I read that they are instructed not to hook the leg unless it’s the actual final pinfall. This is stupid on several levels. First, it makes the wrestlers look stupid. Plus, once the fans catch on, it makes the matches more predicable, as you know this isn’t the end of the match because he’s not hooking the leg. Plus people might catch on that it’s all a work.

They also kept showing the Spanish language commentators during this PPV, even doing a split screen at one point. I have no idea why. WWF is doing a lot of really stupid things around this time. I also hate the time limit draws.

Don't say I didn't warn ya about '95. 

Awful PPV, what more can one say?

It was also the last WCW PPV to take place before the Monday Night Wars started. (We can’t really count Collision in Korea, can we?)

I am in agreement with all of your views here (eerie, eh, are you and I brothers?). Savage/Flair is probably the best bout out of all of them. The stupid lack of logic and rules contradictions just add to the silliness.

When I first watched this, I felt sorry for the wrestlers wrestling in such heat. Blimey, I’m tired after simply sitting on a beach.

Hogan/Vader wasn’t really compelling. Hogan should have done the job to Vader (or Flair) at least one in 1994/95. Hell, even yours truly, a Hulkamaniac, was getting a little tired of his superhuman gimmick at the time, and it was more noticeable given WCW’s more frequent PPVs; when Hogan made sporadic world title defences during the WWF Era, I didn’t really get tired of him, but by the time of Bash at the Beach ‘95, Hogan had made six PPV appearances: he won the WCW World Championship in his first, successfully defended it at his second, successfully defended it at his third, successfully defended it at his fourth, pulled Ric Flair by a strap to “beat” Vader at his fifth, and wrestled a tag team match in his sixth. And that’s before we count Clash of the Champions events.

It was getting old and boring. Like I said, even I was getting bored, and I grew up with Hulkamania. When no-one even has a chance of dethroning him, it’s boring. It might have worked for a while from 1984-88, but when I first saw this on videotape, I thought something like, ‘No-one’s beating him yet and it’s getting boring.’

If you’re not aware already, wait until you see how he does lose the belt.

I know I might sound really harsh here, but unbeatable gets boring after a while (as it did with Goldberg). I think a Hogan pinfall loss to Flair, or Vader, would have given us a “chase the heel” scenario in late 1994 or throughout 1995. I think he only got selfish as time went on, when he did lose, there were usually extenuating circumstances, or he’d do the job in a non-title match.

Someone out there, please write the definitive book on Hogan’s selfishness.

On a final note, I am pretty sure it should be “stone” even when plural. But don’t quote me on that!

Thirty years ago today, SummerSlam ‘94 aired on PPV. We discussed it recently, but it gives me an excuse to share this picture:






And a report from WWF Magazine: